Summary: On February 14th in 1804 a ship ran aground on Svínoy with a precious cargo of cloth and other textile commodities. Large amounts of these commodities were saved before the ship in a following storm was crushed. The ship was named Venus from Sundsvall in Sweden, and the captain was Sam. Dryselius. But, remarkably, very litle is written about this event, despite the fact that it was perhaps the largest and most valuable cargo ever brought ashore. It was, after a thorough registration of every item, put up for auction, and every detail of this is writen in a minute book which gives us a detailed picture of the content of the cargo, the list of persons that were buying, and what were the prices. More than 5000 items were saved and sold for more than 12.000 Rigsdaler (In comparison, the price of 1 barrel of barley was around 5 Rdl). The local officials bought the largest amounts, but it can not have been for their own consumption alone. – The article shall in the first place clear up the event and illuminate the auctions. The next problem is to attempt to follow how and where the commodities were forwarded. It is stressed that small-scale shopping is not the same as illicit traffic. One event can be documented. The skipper Poul P. Nolsøe brought an amount og Manchester-cloth to Norway, and sold it to a merchant there. This is undoubtly an incidence of smuggling. But the assumption is put forward that most of this cloth and textile was sold in exchange for sweaters that were shipped to Denmark as ”sendingsgods” (private commodities shipped by the Royal Trade Mono­poly).